Contini George Street — Restaurant in City of Edinburgh

As it was my birthday my wife thought she'd take me somewhere different for brunch that she thought would be special. What a mistake and she feels quite sad about this.

As a serious breakfaster (and reviewer of breakfasts) I've been to a lot of places and this had a lot of potential with the great quality ingredients they use. But sadly what they do with them is flawed.

Yes - it's a nice environment but surprisingly noisy from all the clattering of crockery. Service was friendly and good, though didn't deal with the issues raised as I will mention later.

Ingredient quality is excellent - sausages, bacon, really good black pudding, eggs and sourdough bread. Tomatoes - despite being billed as Italian tomatoes, were the usual anaemic rubbish we often get in Scotland, barely cooked with just a couple of grill stripes across them to make them seem better than they are.

Fresh orange juice is delicious and coffees and hot chocolate are also good.

Full Scottish breakfast: first impressions look big. But when you realise half of the plate is filled with two huge, thick slices of sourdough bread, it's not actually that big, and at £16 is way over-priced. What are you meant to do with all that bread anyway since only butter, no jam or marmalade, was provided. The menu also said poached eggs with the Full Scottish - scrambled appeared for the 3 of us who ordered that. Two of us would never order scrambled eggs even though these were well done. The bacon was charred so much that it was hard and as a result, had a very nasty, bitter taste. The tomatoes, as already mentioned, were insipid and there was nothing Italian about them (unless something drastic has changed in Italy recently!).

Other choices: sourdough, poached eggs and smoked salmon. The poached eggs were runny but the whole plate of food was freezing cold. Sourdough with poached eggs and black pudding - eggs were bullets so could not create a sauce to turn it into something more than a few individual ingredients. So that's all it was.

The wee boy chose porridge and they were kind enough to construct a breakfast that suited his particular tastes. And he enjoyed a couple of donuts too.

We rarely complain during a meal as that always spoils the occasion but when asked afterwards, we explained these issues to the waitress. She said "oh sorry for that", and that's where it ended. No-one came to offer real apologies or offer to reduce the bill because of this. Poor management there and at over £120 for 6 of us, this was the most expensive breakfast we've had and a slap in the face too. Our usual places would be a fraction of that and significantly better.

I'm afraid we won't be back and can't recommend it as a breakfast place, unless something changes. For lunches that we've had there, yes - we have enjoyed them on several occasions. But not a good start...

When I arrived I was greeted with the usual always appreciated kindness of the Scottish people.

Already from the menu I began to have difficulty understanding how the starters, main and antipasti were divided up as in my view it was everything write in no particular order. We ordered two cocktails to start with (Negroni and Cosmopolitan) which were not bad even though the prices were beyond the actual quality, and a starter which turned out to be Speck when I thought I ordered Prosciutto crudo (again, very confusing menu information) but it was probably the best course of the evening. Before the main courses I ordered a second negroni which unfortunately never arrived, so I decided to order a bottle of white wine which was served with no ice (why serve it with a Seau à Glace if there is no ice in it?).

Then we ordered two first courses, linguine with cozze and spaghetti with tomato, olives and caparri: here unfortunately we realised that the chef was not Italian or at least not very well versed with cooking pasta. Every ingredient in the dishes was disconnected from each other, pasta was completely lacking in flavour and not creamy at all, in addition I had the feeling it was of a industrial brand (low quality, maybe Barilla or De Cecco). Again, absurd prices for what we ate.

Anonymous squid fritter, again overpriced and a good finocchi salad.

What led me to quickly walk away from the restaurant was receiving the bill with the 'optional' tip already in it. If it is optional why is it already there and I am not informed beforehand? I was really annoyed

Final price really unjustifiable. It is a restaurant that claims on the internet to be Italian/Italian cuisine but we are a long way off. It's a place that has so much potential but it's just not in my humble point of view. Or the prices go down or the kitchen...

This is a 100% true review that tells something about Contini.

Before the detail, I will summarise the restaurant as follows:

*Stunning architecture *But extortionate prices, which does not match with the quality of the food (although it is above average)

However, the point of the review is to tell about the folks who own it and the recruitment policies which which they operate:

Staff are required to complete an unpaid trial shift

I personally find this reprehensible from the off, but the following takes it over the edge:

I was advised by other staff that trials were a frequent (weekly!) occurrence My unpaid shift was 4 hours but it was a busy Saturday so extended to 6 hours without notice I was not permitted a break or something to eat I even had to pay public prices for drinks! I was promised a phone call on the day of my trial to advise about the job The phone call never arrived I chased 3 times in the two weeks that followed and eventually gave up

And instead I thought I should write this review!

I met Mr & Mrs Contini and they seemed friendly enough so I was surprised that they condoned such behaviour. I can’t think they would be very impressed if their kids or grandkids were treated with such disrespect.

It is not that I wasn’t hired, that annoyed me, more that it was without explanation. I have almost 10 years waiting experience so there is no doubt that I had the skills so the reason must have been personal. That is fine and understandable if they didn’t think I was right for their business, but It was not acceptable that they took 6 hours of my unpaid time to figure this out. They then failed to have the courtesy let me know!

Needless to say, I don’t think that I will be at Contini again, either as an employee or as a...